Chapter 10 - None that I Can be Proud of
Grace's eyes flew open.
She stared at the canopy of her bed for a few moments before throwing back the blankets.
Last night's soiree had been so full of activity, so full of happenings and events…She couldn't wait to tell Cosette all about it. And Cosette would certainly want to know all about it…
Excitement still thrummed in her veins. It had been exceedingly difficult to fall asleep last night, following her meeting with the mysterious and stoic Inspector, followed by the glorious return of Julius and Jocelyn's son.
It seemed strange to think that there was now someone else in this house. Someone else under this old roof. He was out there somewhere, in his own room, in his own bed…
Grace smiled with excitement as she hastily tried to dress herself. Eventually, she admitted defeat and rang the bell for Artemida. The maid arrived a few moments later and helped her finish the rest of her buttons and bow-ties. The two of them still weren't speaking, but Grace was less preoccupied by her fight with Artemida, especially after all the events of last night. Still, she impatiently tapped her foot and waited for the last of her shoelaces to be tied up nicely, realising that she didn't care about sticking to the details and decorums of this world like she once had.
Nevertheless, Grace raced down the stairs in a plaid-patterned, blue and orange day dress, a white collar around her neck, and a broad black belt cinched in around her waist, eager to begin the routines of the morning.
She ached to be useful. To do something other than parade around for the amusement and benefit of potential male suitors. She knew that the poor would be waiting for their charity, and she might even find Athalia and her children amongst them again, and she couldn't wait to tell her that she'd met (and told off) the Inspector that had burnt their camp to the ground. Perhaps that would make her feel a little bit better.
She adjusted the prim white collar around her neck as she entered the Kitchens, only to find the ovens already on and a crowd already at the back door. But it wasn't Artemida who was stood there, already handing out sandwiches.
"Here you are."
"God bless you, Monsieur Enjolras."
Marcelin nodded his head once to the beggar and he moved along the queue. Another one of the regulars approached the kitchen door and Marcelin offered them another parcel of food.
"God bless you, Marcelin."
"Not at all. Enjoy your meal, Antoine."
On and on it went, with Marcelin handing out the morning's offerings to Hermine, Jeanne, Marie-Madeleine…
Grace approached Marcelin, eyeing him up with intrigue. He noticed her presence as she drew closer and cast her one of those molten-chocolate glances over his shoulder.
"Artemida said that you might be up to join me." he said to her.
"Uhh… yes. I've… I've been helping her out with this since you've been…away."
Marcelin smiled to himself. "This used to be our little duty in the mornings."
"Yes, she told me."
Silence settled between them for a short while as Marcelin handed out the last of the sandwiches. Grace craned her neck and tried to look for Athalia amongst the beggars. She wasn't there, nor was young Iosif.
"I must say, it took me by surprise to hear that my parents' house-guest was so…involved in the plight of the poor." Marcelin said eventually. His voice was low and firm, always with a hint of seriousness to it. "Most of the young ladies of the ton I have met would rather fight to get the latest fall-fashion from the modiste than fight for the wellbeing of those less fortunate than themselves."
"Then you've clearly known some very self-indulgent young ladies."
He nodded solemnly to himself.
Marcelin's expression too was serious. It was always serious, Grace had noticed. Brow set in a permanent, contemplative frown like he was constantly puzzling over some huge question. And when he looked at you, it was as if he was fighting with all of his effort to tear himself away from his inner thoughts to concentrate on what you were saying. Grace couldn't help but wonder what great inner monologues she was interrupting with her small-talk.
"Is that what you've been up to in Paris?" Grace asked him curiously. "Fighting for those less fortunate than yourself?"
"A quest that is often difficult, and hard, and without reward."
"And solitary?"
"No. There are…" Marcelin paused for a moment. "There is a group of us. We call ourselves Les Amis de l'ABC."
"The…friends of The ABC?"
"It's the name of the tavern where we meet." Marcelin explained, low, steady and serious.
Grace couldn't help but smile. She watched as Marcelin glanced down at his boots, his long, fair lashes touching the skin of his cheeks. She had never tried to conjure up a mental image of Julius and Jocelyn's son, but she was rather surprised at just how…angelic he was. Not 'angelic' as in cherubian, though. He was as clean-cut and firmly hewn as an archangel. Again, she was reminded of Saint Michael, and the harsh but beautiful face of a battle-warrior that both the archangel and Marcelin bore. He was almost intimidatingly attractive. His pale, smooth skin and golden-curled hair would be the envy of any girl back in 2023. On a man, though, it was a breathtaking look.
He caught her looking at him and Grace blushed a little, turning away.
"So, uhh…" she muttered, searching for conversation. "Tell me, Marcelin, what is Paris like? I… I've never been."
"Enjolras. It's just Enjolras, not Marcelin. That's what everybody else calls me at The ABC cafe." He said hurriedly. "Only Mama calls me Marcelin these days."
"Enjolras. Fine." She said, the sound of that name still tasting as sweet and spicy as cinnamon on her tongue.
"Paris is… a city of two classes." He said thoughtfully. "I found it…quite difficult to see the sharp divide between the poor and the rich when I first went there. Highborn lords and ladies trundle past the most desolate slums you've ever seen in their carriages. They fan the smell away with their Chinese-silk fans and ignore the stench of poverty out the window."
Grace blinked again. This sounded like a very different Paris to the city she had grown up seeing in the movies… All those white boulevards and lamp-lit avenues, the Seine snaking lazily through the city, the quaint street-cafes and modern art museums, the Eiffel Tower glittering in the dark…
Come to think of it, the Eiffel Tower wouldn't exist yet in this Paris. In fact, very little of the city she knew would be there now.
Still, as she listened to Enjolras describe this city, it was like he was truly coming alive. His voice took on a quality of passion. His eyes alighted with purpose. It was like someone had breathed fire into him. So, she pressed this point, eager to hear more of what animated him so noticeably.
"Is it…really so terrible?" She asked unsurely.
"I think the moment I truly saw Paris for what it was…" Enjolras began quietly. He stopped himself and cast Grace a sidelong look. "Perhaps it's not for the ears of ladies."
"No, please. Tell me." She implored.
Enjolras sighed. "Well… I was walking to my lectures one day, and a woman with rags on her feet and half her teeth missing tried to sell me her five year old daughter."
Grace gasped. "As a slave?!"
"No. No, I mean…She tried to sell her…services to me."
Grace covered her mouth with a hand.
"I almost wish I could have been angry with her. But I saw it for what it was: an act of desperation. Starvation had twisted and warped this woman's life to such an extent that she was prepared to sell her daughter into the hands of a molester. And I knew then I had to decide who I was. Was I someone who was prepared to fan this away as another bad smell? Or was I someone who believed in a France that could be free from the tyranny of poverty?"
"It's a wonderful thing to believe in." Grace said, watching the last of the beggars leave the Chateau's gardens.
"Belief or reality, after that day, I couldn't spend my days debating Descartian ethics or discussing the latest performance of Dido and Aeneas at the opera house. It all felt so-"
"Hollow?" Grace ventured.
Enjolras looked at her again, and nodded slowly. "Exactly."
There was quiet again as the two of them began clearing away the remains of the food on the kitchen table.
"And what of you?" He asked as they wiped down the surfaces and put the last of the chicken back in the parlour. "How have you been filling your days here since you came to Provins?"
Grace noticed the slight deflation in his voice, almost as if he was forcing himself to speak of small-talk instead of his great cause.
"I was very sorry to hear of your parents, by the way." He added, and it felt like something rehearsed and forced. Like he thought he should say it because that's what a gentleman would say.
"Oh, uh, thank you." Grace said hurriedly. "I've been… Well, I've been doing a lot of this, I suppose." Grace added, waving around the kitchen.
"Helping Cook?" Enjolras asked with a slight, sardonic smile.
"Helping Artemida with the morning sandwiches… Going into town, coming back from town… Reading…Playing the Pleyel…"
"It sounds unutterably dull." Enjolras said earnestly.
"Thank you!" Grace exclaimed. "It is. God, I'm so bored! I don't know how you lot do this, it feels like I'm constantly waiting for life to happen!"
"Life is only as dull as you make it, Cousin."
"Says you. You're a man. You aren't bound to your embroidery circle or your knitting needles, waiting around for the day that some wife-hunting lurcher will come along, point at you and say 'yeah, you'll do'."
"There are worse fates in this world than that, Cousin."
"Oh trust me, I know." Grace mumbled, thinking about poor Antione and Hermine and Jeanne and Marie-Madeleine. Many of them would kill for the opportunity to be married-off to a rich Vicomte. "But surely there's a reason why you escaped that fate too."
Grace raised her eyebrow at Enjolras and she thought she saw the hint of a pink blush on his cheeks.
"Your mother has been trying her hardest to get a nice little future like that set up for me. Surely she tried the same for you. Getting her son a perfect little wife."
Enjolras sighed, and it was all the confirmation Grace needed.
"Come to think of it, she did say that she was bringing her acquaintances book out of retirement…!"
"Mother hoped that I might find a fiancé before I left for the Sorbonne, but…"
"But what?"
"I think it was more born out of a desire to give me a reason to come back here, something to tether me to Provins, more than anything else."
"Well…" Grace sighed. "Her thinking wasn't exactly misplaced, was it."
"What do you mean?" Enjolras asked her, serious eyebrow raised.
"You know the two of them have been worried sick about you." Grace said, staring him hard in the face. "You went to Paris and you disappeared. You were expelled from the Sorbonne-"
"How did you know-"
"You gave up your lodgings, you melted into Montmartre without so much as leaving a forwarding address, and in the six months I've been here you've written to Julius and Jocelyn what? Once?"
"I've been…preoccupied." Enjolras replied defensively.
"Preoccupied?" Grace asked, giving him an incredulous look.
Enjolras let out a scoff. "If you knew of the things we are planning… The future we are trying to create..!"
Grace let out a dry laugh. "Even revolutionaries have time to write to their mothers, Cousin."
Enjolras sighed and began walking away from her but he paused, lingering for a moment by the sink, staring at nothing in particular.
"I thought you might have understood, Grace." He said, that serious voice dripping with disappointment, and Grace couldn't help but feel a pang of hurt in her chest when he spoke to her like that. "I thought you might have understood our work. What we hope to achieve. How much bigger than me this is. How much bigger than all of us it is."
Grace searched for a witty reply, but in the end she found none. Eventually, she let Enjolras turn away from her, leaving his bitter air of disappointment in his wake.
But standing silently in the doorway to the kitchen was Julius, face like thunder.
Enjolras gasped quietly and stood up straight. He locked eyes with his father and bowed stiffly to him. Grace's eyes widened. She hadn't witnessed the reunion between Julius and Enjolras last night at the soiree, but now nobody had to pretend. Nobody had to act polite and refined for any onlookers or party guests.
"Sir…" Enjolras said primly.
Grace could have cut the tension between them with a meat-cleaver.
"So, whatever you've got yourself involved in…" Julius said solemnly. "...it means more to you than myself? More to you than your mother?"
"What I've 'got myself involved in' is the very same path that you started me off on, father." he replied coolly. "You were the one who taught me that if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
Julius flinched, looking visibly hurt by his son's words. Grace inhaled sharply too. All of those nasty comments and rumours that the aristocracy had been whispering, about Julius and Jocelyn radicalising their own son with their decidedly pro-workers ways and habits, it had finally come from the horse's mouth himself.
"We never taught you to be like this, son." Julius said, his throat bobbing with emotion. "To disregard your own flesh and blood. Your mother's heart breaks every time we receive no letter, no message, not even a note of wellbeing from you."
"You…you don't understand either." Enjolras said exasperatedly. "The world we are about to bring into the light of the dawn…One day, they will have to build museums for your grandchildren to show them what poverty was like! And they will wonder why millions were allowed to continue so long in misery and deprivation and despair while others lived in luxury-"
"So, why have you come back?" Julius interrupted suddenly.
Enjolras closed his open jaw. He stared at his father with a look of bashfulness on his face.
"You said yourself, you are 'preoccupied'." Julius continued. "So why tear yourself away from your precious work at all to come all the way back here to Provins?"
Enjolras remained silent.
"I knew. I knew as soon as we received that chocolate powder that you'd be home soon, wanting something else." Julius said steadily. "Just like when you were a little boy and you'd been scalded for bringing frogs from the riverbank into your bedroom or something like that... You'd bring me a little present, a nice stone from the gardens or a hen's egg you'd taken from the coop, and leave it for me on my desk. A peace offering. Something to get on my good side again before you asked if you could go hunting with your friends."
Enjolras looked embarrassedly at the floor. Grace too felt a hot blush on her cheeks; this felt like a conversation that she shouldn't really be present for.
"How much debt are you in, son?" Julius asked suddenly.
Enjolras laughed bitterly, shaking his head. "Debt?" he asked. "Is that why you think I came back here, father? So I could beg more funds off you to settle my gambling fees or pay off my whores?!"
"Marcelin…" Julius sighed.
"Is that truly what you think of me?!" Enjolras shouted.
Grace flinched at the harshness of his voice.
"Alright, so be it!" Julius roared back. "Perhaps not for whores or roulette tables, but maybe for your little band of merry men!"
Grace was taken aback. She'd never known Julius display even the slightest hints of anger
"Fighting a revolution takes funds, and costs and resources!" Enjolras said emphatically, thumping his hands together. "Weapons, ammunition, supplies…"
Julius scoffed at his son. "And if you think, for one moment, that I am going to donate anymore of my family's wealth to the means of your own destruction, then I am afraid you have had a wasted journey."
"So, am I to understand that I cannot count on you or mother for help, father?" Enjolras asked pointedly.
"Not if it will lead to your ultimate demolition."
"Demolition…ha! The people will rise, father! It is inevitable. The Masters have silenced the voices of their slaves for generations, and now it is much, much louder than they care to remember. Their voices are growing! Louder and louder each day!"
"Marcelin…"
"And we must all decide soon if we want to shout with them or shout against them!"
"This 'cause', it will make a martyr out of you!" Julius cried, close to tears. "And I cannot support that, son."
Enjolras stood still and silent for a few moments. The tense seconds stretched on for what felt like an age. Grace watched both of them helplessly: Julius trembling with emotion, his son balling his fists stubbornly by his sides.
"Then I no longer have a mother and father." Enjolras eventually said, low and brutally level. "None that I can be proud of, anyhow."
Grace saw the hurt flash in Julius' eyes and his stoic face crumbled. She stepped towards them both and seized Enjolras by the arm.
"Okayyy…." She said, trying to sound soothing but instead it came off rather more manic than she'd intended. "Marcelin, let's go for a walk into town."
"Cousin, I do not wish to-"
Grace dug her nails into his arm.
"Ow!"
"Marcelin, let's go for a walk into town." She repeated again, firmer, with her jaw clenched tight together.
Hopefully she could get them both to calm down. A bit of distance from one another might help them both to cool their heads and clear their thoughts. Lord knew Grace had said things in anger to others that she didn't mean. Especially to those she loved.
Human emotions were human emotions, whether it was 1830 or 2023…
She marched Enjolras past his father and out of the kitchen and she didn't stop until she had him at the front door of the Chateau. There, she finally let up on her iron-tough grip on his arm only to momentarily grab herself a shawl and her bonnet.
When she was dressed for the outside world, she seized Enjolras by the arm again, and this time, he allowed himself to be led away.
The two of them walked side by side in stony silence. They trudged the well-worn path along the river bank into town with not a single word spoken between them. Grace could almost hear Enjolras grinding his teeth in frustration and anger. Every muscle of his arm, underneath her palm, felt tense and taut. She just hoped that by the time they reached Provins, the steam had stopped coming out of his ears…
"I should never have come back." He said finally.
Grace didn't say anything initially. Merely looked at Enjolras patiently, waiting for him to say more.
"I knew it was bound to be a fruitless endeavour;
asking them to aid in the bankrolling of our revolution."
"Yeah…that was a pretty tall order." Grace muttered quietly.
"Still. I had to try." Enjolras sighed. "I could never have forgiven myself if I knew that I had not done something that could have helped our cause to expand."
"They are just worried about you. I mean, I would be too if I had a son like…"
"Like what?"
Grace smiled awkwardly at him, looking at his golden-blonde hair blowing in the breeze, his stern but still strikingly handsome face.
"Like you." She said with a cheeky grin.
But Enjolras didn't seem to share in her sentiment. Grace tutted and rolled her eyes; he was probably still too wound-up to realise he was being flirted with. His brow remained furrowed all the way into town. Past the bookshop, past the boulangerie, past the tithe barn and the stone town square. Grace was worried that she'd run out of places to take him, until she heard the bells of the church.
"I know the perfect place to calm down." She said with a smile.
Enjolras stumbled a little as Grace pulled him by the arm yet again, but Grace was eager to show him the convent and Fauchelevent's rose garden. She couldn't think of a more peaceful place.
Javert dragged himself out of his bed at the Inn with a stinking headache and sore eyes.
He hadn't slept all night, only really managing to doze in a light snooze by the time the light of dawn was creeping over the horizon. It felt like he had ignited something that he couldn't put out. Turned on a part of his mind that he couldn't turn back off.
His quiet mind was disturbed. His equilibrium had been interrupted.
It was as if an enchantment had been laid upon him to never sleep still again, never feel settled and at peace again. He'd forced himself to lie still in his bed, even though his restless feet had wanted to pace around the room. But it seemed that every time he felt his racing heartbeat calm and his consciousness edging into dreams, he heard the sound of her laughter in his mind.
Her face was impossible to banish from his thoughts: That first look she had given him across the crowded room. The way her hair had blown softly in the breeze by the open window. The movement of her hands over the pianoforte's keys.
Javert knew that she most likely despised him. Their rather heated disagreement about the Romani camp had seen to that. But he theorised that it was probably better that way; Attachment was a weakness, men like him could not be seen to show favouritism or sentiment, and women, as he well knew, were complicated creatures. Much too complicated for him to be dallying with at this important stage of his career.
And still, he couldn't quite bring himself to give up the hope that he might see her again.
Without Malloirave and the rest of his men to command, he felt listless and without something to do. Javert milled about the room of the Inn, massaging the pain between his eyes and drifting from spot to spot. With his thoughts preoccupied, he managed to get himself dressed.
There were so many of her expressions, so many of her inflections, so many of her mannerisms that swirled around his mind. She refused to let him forget. And even though the morning was fresh, he felt groggy. Even though he had only drunk one glass of bordeaux, he felt drunk.
He donned his familiar coat and top hat, hoping that these things might help him remember a part of who he was. Still, the enchantment of last night sat heavy in his shoulders when he descended the stairs of the Inn.
"Inspector Javert!" The Innkeeper called out to him.
It took him a moment to realise he was being spoken to, but when he turned to face him, he blinked once or twice and shook his head.
For God's sake, pull yourself together, man!
He would have thrust his face in ice cold water or thumped his forehead had he been alone, but he simply ground his jaw and tightened his fists.
"Your horse, sir." He began, a little nervously.
"What about my horse?" Javert grumbled.
"The Blacksmith, he returned to town this morning." He continued. "Your horse is shoed and ready to ride."
He did not answer. Hours ago, this had been exactly the news he'd craved. Now, it felt like a court-ordered mandate.
Javert reached inside one of the pockets of his coat and wordlessly dropped a coin purse on the counter. He did not wait for the Innkeeper to count the money, he knew it would be exactly enough to cover his stay and not a penny more, and with his heavy boots thumping on the ground, he left.
As he emerged out onto the streets of Province, he turned his collar to the winds and steeled himself for the world. That girl, whoever she'd been, he had to forget her. Sometimes, despite his best efforts, his body had reactions. He became hungry, he got exhausted. Even with all of the discipline in the world, he still felt these sensations. And he tried to think of what he'd felt last night as nothing more than hunger pangs or prickling eyes. The sensation of loneliness.
It was best that he find his horse as swiftly as possible and ride on to Paris to join the rest of his battalion.
He began walking the streets, looking for a sign that might point him in the direction of the Blacksmith. Normally, he would have gone back to the Inn and asked the Innkeeper, or perhaps one of the farmhands or maids in the street, but his pride felt too wounded already today. He needed to feel more like himself, and the Javert he knew never asked for help. So, he submerged himself in the hustle and bustle of the streets as if he were a local, walking the cobbled streets and keeping a half-cocked ear alert for conversations and intel.
He found himself stuck behind a small gaggle of nuns, who were all chattering about the poor quality of last night's mutton, when he heard a voice that set his whole body on edge.
"It's not far. You'll like it. Trust me."
"I swore off churches and religion a long time ago, Cousin."
"Ugh, are you going to give me the 'religion is the opiate of the masses' speech?"
Javert tensed up, like an alley cat confronted with a mutt. His frantic eyes scanned the street and there, on the other side of the road, was that girl.
Grace.
Her name echoed in his head. Unwelcomed, had it not been for the pleasant ache it ignited in his stomach.
Her mannerisms, her impertinent smile, even the light sparkle of her soft brown eyes… All of it that he'd tried to recall in his dreams was a pitiful imagining compared to the realness of her.
But he soon noticed the other person she was with. Arms linked, they walked down the street together without so much as casting a glance his way.
"I like that. 'Religion is the opiate of the masses'." Her companion said. "Where have you read that? Is it Hegel? Marat?"
Javert immediately recognised the gentleman too; The son of his hosts last night, who had rather unexpectedly turned up at the soirée. He remembered Grace had been quite taken with him, and he could see why: Tall, handsome, fair and young… The two of them made a remarkably handsome pair.
"Uhh…Oh hang on." Grace mumbled, sounding a little embarrassed. "I can't remember when Karl Marx first started publishing stuff…"
"Marx? I haven't heard of this writer. Is he a scholar?"
"German. Very avant garde. New to the scene. You wouldn't have heard of him…" she said hurriedly. "Do you like roses, Enjolras?"
"I…neither despise nor adore them." The fair youth replied, reeling a little at the sudden change in conversation.
"I love yellow roses." She said with a bright smile. "Fauchelevent always gives me a bouquet whenever I come to visit."
Unbeknownst to him, the pleasant ache in Javert's chest had slowly changed into a feeling of acute resentfulness. As he watched the two of them walk away, in the direction of the Church, he came to the conclusion that they were clearly courting.
An unmarried young lady, strolling about town alone with an eligible gentleman, arm in arm, engaged in pleasant conversation… He could see no other reason why the two of them would be out in town so publicly together.
And that feeling of resentfulness steadily, but unmistakably, crystallised into jealousy.
Instantly, he despised the young gentleman.
Stop it, you fool. He chastised himself. He's attractive, personable, wealthy. Everything a young lady would want in a suitor… And He's much closer to her in age.
The fact that Javert was a man in his late forties, leering after a young woman who looked no older than perhaps twenty-six or twenty-seven had not escaped him. She was young. Perhaps twenty years younger than him. He was old enough to have fathered her, for Christ sake…
But even though he punished himself for the thoughts and feelings he had for Grace, he still felt that jealousy. White hot and bitter on his tongue.
He followed them for a short time, staring at their backs and watching the two of them exchanging their pleasantries. Envy made him grind his teeth and scrunch his face.
He hated this feeling. Hated that he was feeling it. Froid had taught him to control his impulses, check any emotion that did not serve him. This emotion did not serve him, and he tried to push it away or push it down inside him with his mother and with Camille and with the war…but it wouldn't stay there.
It would not stay there.
"You do realise, don't you Cousin, that I'm… I'm a man?"
"Yes, I had noticed." Grace responded with an eye-roll.
The two of them delicately tiptoed up the aisle of Saint-Quiriace church, whispering to one another.
"No, I mean…" Enjolras sighed. "…You told me this rose garden of yours is in the convent. I am a man. They don't allow men in convents."
"Oh…" Grace said with a frown. "Well, that can't be right. Fauchelevent works in the convent…"
"If he is the gardener, as you suggest, then workmen might be given exceptions."
"Wait here. I'll ask!"
Grace shoved Enjolras into a pew and went striding off in the direction of the garden.
"Grace, you cannot change the rules of a five hundred year-old convent in one single morning!" He called after her.
"Really, Enjolras. If you don't have the stomach to attempt to challenge a group of nuns, how are you going to find the stomach to change the whole establishment!"
Enjolras blanched and closed his open mouth. Grace laughed and threw a cheeky smile his way before continuing on her way.
Grace could hear the sisters singing in the cloisters when she emerged into the rose garden. For a second, she drank in the peace and the quietness. Now summer was at an end, and autumn encroaching in, the floor was covered in dropped petals.
"Cosette! Fauchelevent!" She called out into the empty space.
Her echo rang out amongst the stone walls with no reply. She began wandering around the garden, looking for anyone, a familiar face that she could interact with.
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she spied a figure hunched over the bushes, pruning the dead-heads. He wore a large straw hat to hide his face from the sun and Grace sighed with relief.
"Ahh, Fauchelevent! There you are." She said, striding up to him. "I called out to you, didn't you hear me?"
She reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Hello, my dear Grace."
From under the broad straw hat emerged the face of the Story Teller. Grinning menacingly. Eyes beaming with that mercurial madness that she'd seen so often in her nightmares.
Grace stood utterly gobsmacked for a moment, reeling in horror.
"You..!" She breathed.
The Story Teller looked her up and down. "My, my, how different you look from the last time we met. Enjoying yourself?"
Grace seized him by the shirt. "Take me back!" She roared into his face. "Send me home now!"
She'd waited six long months to say that, and she wasn't going to beat around the bush.
"But my dear Grace, the story's only just beginning."
"I don't care! Send me home!" She shouted, angry tears welling in her eyes. "Take me home now!"
"But you asked for this, Grace." The Story Teller replied in a sweet, sing-songy voice.
"I…I didn't ask for this." Grace uttered. She was slightly taken aback; in all her imaginings of what she'd say to the Story Teller if she ever saw him again, she hadn't conceived of him saying that…
"Oh, but you did. You told me. You wanted to live your own story. You wanted to be somewhere where you weren't part of someone else's."
Grace choked out a gasp. "I…I didn't mean this. I didn't want this!"
"So ungrateful…" the Story Teller tutted, leaning on his garden hoe.
"Ungrateful?!" Grace spat. "Have you seen what's out there?" She asked, pointing beyond the convent's walls. "The poverty, the desperation, the lack of flushing toilets?!"
"You chose this world, my dear Grace."
"I did not!" She cried. "I…."
But she stopped herself. As a memory came back to her. That night outside Ali's kebabs. The books, all those books that the Story Teller had in his bag. When she'd picked them up, she'd nonchalantly picked the biggest, meatiest one and given it back to him.
"So… this is a story." She said breathily. "Is… is this world not even real? Are Julius, Jocelyn, Cosette… are they all-"
"They are as real as you and I, Grace. All stories are real. We bring them to life by telling them. That is my magic. That is your magic too."
"But…But, there's something else. Something else to this world..."
She tapped at the side of her head. Remembering all those melodies and tunes that sometimes came roaring up to greet her. And the hard, obsidian wall that slammed down around them whenever she got too close.
"Well, I couldn't have you remembering the story before it happens!" The Story Teller chuckled. "That would spoil it entirely!"
"Spoil?!" Grace asked incredulously. "So. I know this world? I know this story?"
"Well, I should certainly say so. Those songs that you've been hearing in your head? They hail from another adaptation of this world. Another universe like this, brought to life."
"So that's you again? You won't let me remember?"
"Spoilers…" is all he said in reply, grinning at her with frightening blitheness.
"I don't care about spoilers! I don't care if I never find out…! Please, I want to go home… Please!" She cried, anger and sadness and desperation pouring out of her.
"You should have met him by now." The Story Teller said enigmatically, ignoring her pleas.
"Met who?" Grace said, blinking back her surprise.
"Him. He is important, Grace. Stick with him, and you'll have your story."
"Who are you talking about?" She asked exasperatedly. "What do you mean?"
"Him!" The Story Teller repeated again, more forcefully this time. "I know the two of you have a connection. I put it there. A thread tying the two of you together. Follow him, and you'll have your story."
"I…I don't understand." Grace mumbled.
"You can't just give up on the story now, my dear Grace." The Story Teller continued. "Not now it's about to get interesting."
"No, please! My Mum…I need to see her again..!" Grace sobbed.
But the Story Teller was unmoved. He tipped his straw hat and began walking away from her.
"A character cannot be just…written out of a narrative. That would be bad storytelling. You have to stay here until the end."
"Please! I need to go home. I don't belong here!"
She began running after him, but in her skirts and petticoats, running was a tall-order. He ducked and weaved, dodging around rose bushes and running from view.
"Please! What about my cat?! My flat?! What about my life?!" She cried after him.
"You must be here until the story is finished, Grace." He called back wistfully.
He disappeared behind a bush of red roses, and by the time Grace had caught up with him, he was gone.
"Come back!" Grace screamed, craning her head up into the empty sky. "Please! Come back!"
She sank to her knees and sobbed.
Her chance was gone. The Story Teller was gone. And she was still here. Still stuck in the 1830's.
"Mademoiselle…?" A quiet voice called out to her.
Grace gasped and spun her head around to see the dark Inspector that she'd met last night standing in the centre of the rose garden.
He stared at her with a strange mix of concern and sternness on his face. It was a look that she could tell he didn't express often. It looked new on him, his facial frown lines and muscles set in ways that weren't well-worn.
He was quite possibly the last person in the world that she wanted to see at that moment and she tried in vain to swallow her sobs and hide the blush of embarrassment that had crept up her cheeks.
"Mademoiselle, I heard…I heard you crying…" he said again.
He didn't approach her or come any closer. She respected him for that, at least. Grace slowly gathered herself and got up off the floor, wiping her tears with the back of her sleeve.
"Oh, please. Have this." He said.
Javert delved into his inner pocket and produced a single white handkerchief. Again, he did not draw any closer, letting her come to him in her own time. But approach, she did, and took the clean handkerchief with a weak nod of thanks.
She dried her face and tried to stop her body from trembling, all whilst the Inspector waited patiently in silence.
"Thank you." She said weakly.
She didn't look at him. She didn't want him to see the tears that still lingered in her eyes. A little of the anger and resentment from their argument last night carried over, even though he had shown her kindness just now. Or was trying to, at least.
"Do you…need my assistance at all?" He asked her gently.
"No. I…uhh…I just had an argument with someone." She said, casting her eyes to the floor. He could tell she was lying, or hiding a part of the truth from him, but Grace shook her head and tried to look cheerful. "Nothing sinister. You can stand down, Inspector."
Still, he did not take his eyes off her. It was an interrogation tool he had picked up from Froid: stay quiet for long enough and eventually they might fill the silence with something incriminating.
"It was an…old acquaintance of mine that I didn't part on the best of terms with in the past."
"I see." He said simply.
Javert might have assumed it was something to do with the fair youth he had seen her enter the church with, had he not seen him leave a few moments after Grace had disappeared into the convent gardens. The young man had gone striding past him, giving him not a jot of notice, and Javert had continued his surveillance of Grace undiscovered. Then, he had heard noises. Distant and muffled amongst the singing choir and the cavernous echo of the church. A hunch had told him to follow it. And so he did.
Straight into the rose garden, where he had found Grace on her knees and weeping like a child.
"Do you have a family, Inspector?" She asked suddenly. "Wife? Children?"
Javert's eyes grew and he swallowed down a lump in his throat.
"I do not, Mademoiselle."
"No one?"
He shook his head.
"Oh. I guess that makes two of us." She said sadly.
"Did you not leave any… loved ones back in Oxford?" He asked, probing gently.
"Yes. And no…It's complicated." She opened her mouth to say more but abruptly closed it.
Javert watched her with curious fascination, clearly grappling with something that she felt she couldn't share.
"God, I just want to go home." She whimpered, her eyes welling up again.
His heart ached when he saw her bottom lip quiver and the tears roll down her cheeks. She had been so fiery, so assertive and confident last night, and now she was vulnerable and scared. It was like looking at a wholly different woman.
"If you are homesick, I'm sure your hosts could make arrangements to-"
"It's not that simple." She cut in quickly.
He was about to ask her why, when the shrill voice of a nun called out to them over the rose bushes.
"Men are not permitted in this part of the convent, Monsieur!"
The voice made both of them flinch and whatever spell of nearness and confidentiality had grown between them in that minute was gone.
"Apologies, Sister."
The Inspector bowed stiffly to the nun and then to Grace. With one last lingering look into her eyes, he left without another word. Grace watched him go, clutching his handkerchief to her chest. A feeling roared in her chest but she would be hard-pressed to describe it. Was it empathy? Mistrust? Curiosity?
She still felt anger towards the Inspector for what he'd done to Athalia and the other Romani. But she still couldn't help but feel intrigued by him. A sort of hateful fascination.
Eventually the shrieking nun went back to her own work and Grace was left alone again. She thought about staying for a while and enjoying the garden, but her thoughts were too heated and fast. Too much had happened. Too much had been said.
So she took a few wobbly steps towards the exit and breathed in a deep sigh…
…when a hand reached out of the bushes and seized her by the arm.
"Grace! That man, who was he?"
When Grace's heart had stopped hammering in her chest, she found Fauchelevent on the other side of the hand that had grabbed her.
"Jesus Christ…" she breathed. "I've really had enough of nasty surprises today."
"That man!" Fauchelevent growled, and the sound of it made Grace sober instantly. "Who was he?!"
"His name is Javert." Grace said, concerned with the intensity in his voice. Fauchelevent, who had been so soft and kind and gentle. Now there was panic and menace in his voice. "I think he came to town yesterday? He's an Inspector with the Paris police force."
"Javert…" Fauchelevent breathed.
There was fear in the gardener's eyes. Real, palpable fear.
"What's wrong?" Grace asked Fauchelevent. "Do you know him?"
Fauchelevent looked at Grace with the expression of a hunted animal.
"Did you bring him here? Did you tell him anything about me or Cosette?" He asked fiercely.
"Wh-No. No, I didn't bring him here."
"Did you tell him about me or Cosette?!" He shouted, seizing her by the shoulders.
"No! I didn't tell him anything! Jesus Christ, what's going on?!" Grace shouted back.
Fauchelevent released her, looking around the rose garden with a vacant, haunted expression.
"We…we have to go. I have to take Cosette far from this place."
"Why, Fauchelevent?" She asked.
"The only reason he's here must be because he knows…"
"Knows what?"
But she got no reply. Instead the gardener took a few nervous paces, thinking to himself. He abruptly stopped and turned back to Grace.
"I will tell Cosette that you bade her farewell. And that you were sad to see her go."
"Y-you're going now?!"
"As soon as I can muster a carriage."
"Oh my God, who is this man?!" Grace asked exasperatedly. "Why is he some kind of devil that you have to run from?"
"He is a devil, Grace. And if you have any sense you will run from him too."
Fauchelevent strode off and Grace felt even more confused than before, if that was even possible.
Before anything else could happen, she gathered up her skirts and ran from the rose garden.
She looked around the church and found Enjolras missing from his pew, so she kept on running, garnering quite a few tuts and offended expressions from the other worshippers.
But as she started running back through Provins, back to the Chateau, an idea formed in her mind. It all fell into place at once. Even when she became breathless and tired, the idea kept her going.
She saw Enjolras by the banks of the river, almost back at the Chateau. His golden hair was shining in the sun and he looked radiant in the morning light.
"Enjolras! Enjolras!" She called out to him.
He turned around and faced her, shoulders relaxing a little as he recognised her.
"I'm sorry, Cousin. But when you said what you said about finding the stomach for change, I had to leave right aw-"
"Take me to Paris with you."
Enjolras blinked at her in shock. "What?"
"You're the person I have to follow. You're 'Him'. You must be."
Everything that the Story Teller had told her pointed to Enjolras. He had turned up yesterday, shaking up her whole life in Provins. The 'invisible thread' between them, that must refer to the instant connecting of minds that had happened between them. And she couldn't leave this place and go home until the story was over, and the only way she could see this story through was if she followed him.
"Cousin…" Enjolras said, a blush on his face.
"There's nothing more for me here. Athalia's gone, Artemida wasn't who I thought she was, and Cosette… it sounds like she'll be gone with the afternoon post."
"The work we do, it's not for the likes of-"
"Please, Enjolras! I am so, so bored. The sandwiches in the morning and the Latin lessons and the afternoons playing the Pleyel… it's not enough."
Enjolras looked at her for a long moment.
"All of this…" Grace continued, gesturing up and down her body. "…I can give it up. I don't need it. I don't want it. Your mother dresses me up like this so I can find myself a husband, but I can't think of anything worse. I have more to offer than just a place on the marriage market!"
"I know, I can see that, and I've only known you a mere handful of hours."
"Then take me back to Paris! Bring me to Montmatre. I can be useful, I can do whatever you're doing."
She could see that she was swaying Enjolras. He had a look in his eye that was promising. And Grace dared to hope.
"Can you read and write?" He asked.
Grace scoffed. "Can I read and write!"
"Alright, alright…" Enjolras laughed. "Well, can you…can you fight?"
"I…I can learn."
"Hmm… I suppose that makes you little different to some of the other boys in Les Amis d'ABC."
He bit his lip, and Grace gave him a look of expectancy.
"Well?" She asked.
"Alright. We leave tonight."
Grace let out a single, surprised laugh. She'd half expected Enjolras to say no, but she was elated.
"But, you must tell no one that we are going." He added.
"Of course."
"Pack sparingly."
"Yes."
"And we'll have to think of another name for you."
"Another name?" She asked, confused.
"It would be better if you adopted a man's alias. You wouldn't have to stick to a middle-class woman's sensibilities and expectations then. Walking out unchaperoned, dressing appropriately, and…well…funds are not plentiful currently, so you would have to make do with sharing your lodgings with me."
"Alright, fine." Grace said with a shrug. "Just as long as you don't snore."
Enjolras smirked. "It would have to be kept a secret. Who you really are. Not only would it be scandalous for you, but I'm not entirely sure how the other members of the organisation would react to having a woman in our ranks. That aren't all as…liberal as I."
"I mean…okay. I'll try." Grace said, thinking she'd have to take a fair few pairs of rolled up socks with her to shove down her trousers…
"So…" Enjolras said with a challenging smile. "What would you like your new name to be, Cousin?"
Grace thought for a moment, cycling through a whole load of French business names that sounded nice: Chanel, Dior, Garnier, Renault..
Then she started thinking of all the French celebrities she knew: Claude Monet, Thierry Henri, Jacques Cousteau, Alexandre Dumas…
They all didn't feel quite right. Until she remembered a friend David had in his lab. He had been French, he was funny, when Grace had come by to visit he had always looked up from his microscope to ask her how she was… His eyes were dark and his hair was sweeping and chestnut. Truth be told, Grace had fancied him a little bit. Romily had been his name.
"What about Romily?" She asked.
"Romily. The French translation of 'Romulus'." Enjolras said wistfully. "My father would like that name. Are you sure you're bored of his Latin lessons?"
Grace huffed.
"And a surname?" Enjolras pressed.
"Oh lord, I don't know…"
"Well…who is your favourite painter?" He asked, becoming a little impatient.
Grace didn't really have a 'favourite' artist. But she did have one or two pictures on the walls of her flat at home that she'd rescued from the nearest Oxfam shop. One of them she could recall to mind: It was a ballet dancer, impressionist in nature, swirling white tutu and blurry golden stage-lights. She could picture it in her mind's eye.
"Degas."
"Degas? I've never heard of him."
"No…you won't have."
Because he doesn't start painting until the 1870's, I think… she added silently in her head.
"Romily Degas." Enjolras said aloud, testing the name out in the open air.
It sounded good, and Grace thought so too.
"Romily Degas." Grace repeated with a smile. "Hopefully he has better luck in the future than I have…"